The General report describes the main statistical activities carried out by the ILO in the period 2009-2013. It highlights areas and issues for consideration by the Conference, and suggests possible areas for future work on labour statistics by the ILO.

In October 1982, the Thirteenth ICLS adopted new standards concerning statistics of the economically active population, employment, unemployment and underemployment (Resolution I of the Thirteenth ICLS). The resolution forms part of the standards and guidelines referred to in the Labour Statistics Convention, 1985 (No. 160), and Recommendation, 1985 (No. 170), of the International Labour Office.
It replaces Resolution I of the Eighth ICLS (1954) concerning statistics of the labour
force, employment and unemployment, and paragraphs 4-9 and 13 of Resolution I11 of
the Eleventh ICLS (1 966) concerning measurement and analysis of underemployment
and underutilisation of manpower.

Since 1971, the ILO has a programme on estimates and projections of the economically active population (EAP). The main objective of this programme is to provide constituents, international agencies and the public at large with the most comprehensive, detailed and comparable estimates and projections of the EAP in the world. In this context, regular estimates and projection are produced and published by the ILO.

The International Labour Office (ILO) programme on estimates and projections of the economically active population (EPEAP) is part of a larger international effort on demographic estimates and projections to which several UN agencies contribute. Estimates and projections of the total population and its components by sex and age group are produced by the UN Population Division, and employed populations by the ILO, the agricultural population by FAO and the school attending population by UNESCO.

2012

The manual provides valuable advice to those involved in the production of statistics on occupational injuries, using sources other than the traditional notification systems. Its extensive chapters on concepts and definitions, as well as types of data and classifications, will serve as a reference to both producers and users of these statistics. While aimed at the collection of data through household surveys and establishment surveys, the manual will also be useful to those responsible for the systems for the notification of occupational injuries. It may serve to improve some of the elements of the data compiled through these systems. The training materials at the end will also be useful for training labour statisticians and users of the statistics.

2011

This Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work is intended to guide countries in generating systematic and comparable data on volunteer work via regular supplements to labour force or other household surveys. The objective is to make available comparative cross-national data on a significant form of work that is growing in importance but that is often ignored or rarely captured in traditional economic statistics. Doing so will help to fulfill the United Nations Secretary General’s recommendations in his follow-up to the implementation of the International Year of Volunteers report (United Nations, 2005) that governments “vigorously” pursue “actions to build up a knowledge base” about volunteer work and to “establish the economic value of volunteering.”

This paper reports on analysis of data from Namibia’s 2008 Labour Force Survey (LFS) so as to describe and compare informal and formal employment in the country. The paper is based on an understanding of informal employment which goes beyond the traditional concept of “informal sector”.

The report of the ILO Working Group on Labour Underutilization entitled “Beyond Unemployment: Measurement of Other Forms of Labour Underutilization” (ILO 2008) revisits the appropriateness of the current international standards concerning the statistical measurement of employment and unemployment. It suggests that the standard indicator of unemployment is maintained, while at the same time it calls for the introduction of supplementary indicators of various dimensions of underemployment.

2009

The International Labour Organization has long been concerned with the regulation of working time as one aspect which has a direct and measurable impact on the health and well-being of working persons, their level of fatigue and stress (and on that of the people close to them). It also has an important impact on productivity levels and labour costs for establishments, and on the general quality of life in all countries.